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Posted Tuesday morning, December 12, 2017.

For months, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said that the Republican tax plan wouldn't add a penny to the national debt, pledging that more than 100 people in his agency were “working around the clock” to calculate how much additional growth would come from the plan. On Monday, the Treasury Department released the fruit of those efforts: a one-page document asserting that the $1.5 trillion tax plan would generate more than enough to pay for itself.

The analysis relies on two big — and controversial — assumptions: that it will generate economic activity well in excess of what independent analysts project, and that the rest of the administration's economic agenda, including regulatory reform, infrastructure spending and an overhaul of the welfare system, will take effect.

Treasury assumes the U.S. economy will grow 2.9 percent every year for the next 10 years (based on Office of Management and Budget figures), a large increase from the 1.9 percent per-year growth that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is projecting.---Heather Long, the Washington Post, December 11, 2017.

To read Long’s whole column, click on the image or follow the link to the Wonkblog at the Washington Post.

You should also read Paul Krugman’s op-ed at the New York Times, Steve Mnuchin Pulls a Paul Ryan. If you read Krguman regularly, you know that’s not a compliment:

Even reporters hardened to Trump administration lies seemed shocked by the brazenness of this bait-and-switch. What made Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, think he could get away with it?

Well, one answer is that similar scams on the part of congressional Republicans, Paul Ryan in particular, have generally received highly respectful treatment from the news media. Why shouldn’t Mnuchin imagine he can pull off the same trick?

Actually, he probably can’t. But the truth is that on economic policy, as in other areas, the Trump administration isn’t much of a departure from recent Republican norms. There’s a fundamental continuity in the con jobs: Mnuchin is basically trying to do a Paul Ryan; he just lacks the acting skills to pull it off…